Look (2008)

Look
written and directed by Adam Rifkin

According to the opening credits, the average american is caught on a camera about 200 times in a given day. Thus begins the depraved, aggresively savage view of Adam Rifkin's Look. Actually, I lied, it starts off all nice and chipper, however, for dramatic purposes, where thrown into the lives of several people who will all interact, via Crash style, in each others lives one way or another.
did I mention the whole is filmed in a surviellance style. Whether its a cop car, an office camera, bathroom camera, parking lot surviellance , anything is used to tell the story. Just not a regular camera. the film is designed to show you how we can capture anything, at any moment.
there are several intersecting stories, one involving a teenage girl who is trying to seduce a teacher, a convienent store clerk (an awesome Giuseppe Andrews) and his friend, a lawyer and his affair, a cop killing, a deptartment store manager(first timer Hayes Macarthur, who is funny as hell) and his various indescretions, and the frequent tormenting of a fellow employee in an office building. The film also tackles heavy subject matter which may turn off alot of viewers, for instance the big three are, racial profiling, adultry and child abduction. The movie as it unfolds is a haunting exercise in what we are capable of seeing at any give moment.
Some uncontrollable mistakes can have the most devasting effects, and the most gut churning criminals can get away scot free, its all how it plays out. We are meant to look into these lives as if we are dropped in for a week.
I didn't know how the vocabulary of the film would work, but it works wonderfully, everything is really believable, very few instances actually take you out of the picture to make you realize its only a movie, but thats apart of its genius. We as compulsive human beings, are accustomed to watching the internet videos, the highlight cop reels, the reality tv shows, that we grasp onto the screen, without missing a single hint or beat. No matter how mundane something on the screen is, its means something. There are big laughs and rough shocks that happen, but its a work of genius. Most could pass it off as a mastubatory work of fiction. But this film is a better Crash. Not that I'm saying academy take notice, its just this is a fantastic movie, that will find its audience.
If not that, then a fine work in creativity.
Sure to be a cult classic.
From the director of Dark Backward and Detroit Rock City.